Letter from Chicago: The City’s Art Scene Scrambles Senses of Scale with Homegrown Aims

There is something reassuring about living in a city stretched along a lake. In Chicago, once you figure out where you are in relation to Lake Michigan, your sense of direction crystallizes. Streets snap against a grid whose point of origin is downtown at the intersection of State and Madison. Addresses increase or decrease from that center, with odd numbers on the south and east sides of the streets, and even numbers to the north and west. A longtime graphic designer who grew up here once told me that he could determine exactly where he was in the city just by looking at the addresses. That might seem mundane—and we do of course now have Google Maps—but I believe this sense of order in Chicago has a grounding effect in subtle ways that can be specific and unexpected and diffusely felt.

Originally published in the December 2021/January 2022 print issue of ARTnews